These are the people whose deeds we may wish to emulate, who can serve as models for how we want to behave and what we want to become. What makes such goodness possible? Why were some people immune to the infection of evil? We call them Upstanders. But there were a few - a precious few - men, women and even children who opened their homes and their hearts and provided havens for the victims, a place to sleep, a crust of bread, a kind word, a hiding place. Indeed, the Holocaust was an atrocity, senseless and anguishing. We can learn so much about evil in studying the Holocaust that it leaves us numb, that despair overtakes us, that we sense our own helplessness. In the struggle between powerless victims and an overwhelmingly powerful killing machine, neutrality is anything but neutral. Resistance took many forms, courage manifest itself in many ways taking up arms was but a last stand.Īnd we must understand the indifference of neutrality. Yet even though they were powerlessness, they were far from passive. All became killers.īecause it happened, we must understand the circumstances of the victims, who had to make choiceless choices between the impossible and the horrific, and who faced conditions of such utter powerlessness that they could do little to determine their fates. Some were enthusiastic, others more reluctant. Some were even professionals, lawyers and doctors, ministers and economists who used the skills they had learned to become more efficient killers. Some were sadists and criminals – people unlike us – but many more were ordinary men trying to do their best, to fulfill their obligations. We must understand its emblematic invention, the death camp and the people who served in these camps. It’s a fitting time to ask: Why should the world remember the Holocaust, which began more than 75 years ago and enveloped almost all of Europe?īecause it happened, we must understand the evil - systematic evil, state-sponsored evil, industrialized killing, mass murders - that was the essence of the Holocaust. Jews throughout the world observe the 27th of Nissan in the Hebrew calendar - just after Passover and in proximity to the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising of 1943 - as Yom HaShoah. Some countries observe dates that relate directly to their own Holocaust history.
Observed at the UN headquarters and in countries throughout the world, it is not the only Holocaust memorial day. January 27th, the anniversary of the Soviet liberation of Auschwitz, is the day designated by the United Nations as International Holocaust Remembrance Day. First published in the Jewish Journal, January 25, 2018. Michael Berenbaum, professor of Jewish studies and director of the Sigi Ziering Institute. Remembering Why We Must Remember the Holocaust by Dr.
0 kommentar(er)
